Why can't I just cope with this?

A friend of a friend messaged me last week. She was in early pregnancy and suffering from terrible pregnancy sickness. She had heard I had been through hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) in both of my pregnancies, and she had questions. What had helped. What hadn't. How long it had lasted. We messaged back and forth for a few hours. Then, towards the end, she wrote, "I'm just so annoyed with myself. Why can't I just cope with this?"

It took me straight back to my first pregnancy. I had thought exactly the same thing. Millions of women get sick in pregnancy. Most of them seem to get on with it. Why is mine so bad? Why can't I just deal with it?

Before I was pregnant, I had a picture of what it would be like. Green smoothies. Glowing skin. Nothing could have been further from the truth. And somewhere in the gap between that picture and the reality, I decided the problem was me. I had expected pregnancy to feel a certain way, it felt nothing like that, and so I must be doing it wrong.

I think we do this to ourselves a lot. If we are not having the experience we expected, we assume we have failed at it. And pregnancy sickness comes with its own picture. I mean, we still call it morning sickness, as if it keeps office hours and has cleared up by lunch. For some women that might be their experience, but for many it is nothing like it. Because the mild version is the one most of us have heard of, when ours is worse, the easiest conclusion is that the fault is ours.

So this is what I always say to any woman I come across who is in the middle of it, and this is what I said to her:

It feels hard because it is hard. Not a bit hard. Really, really hard. You are not failing at it. Anyone would find this incredibly difficult. Far more women go through this than you would ever imagine. We just do not talk about it.